The present disclosure relates to an ice dispensing apparatus and a refrigerator. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to an ice dispensing apparatus that can stably dispense ice by employing an inventive ice conveying method, thereby improving ice dispensing reliability and thus reliability.
Generally, a refrigerator functions to store food at a low temperature by supplying cool air into refrigerant and freezing compartments using a cooling cycle apparatus having a compressor, a heat exchanger, and the like.
The refrigerator further has a function for making ice cubes by supplying cool air having a temperature below zero to the freezing compartment and dispensing the ice cubes or crushed ice pieces formed by crushing the ice cubes.
In order to properly make and dispense the ice cubes (or crushed ice pieces), an ice making apparatus and an ice dispensing apparatus are provided in the refrigerator. The ice making apparatus functions to make the ice cubes using the cool air of the freezing compartment and the ice dispensing apparatus functions to selectively dispense the ice cubes made by the ice making apparatus or the ice pieces formed by crushing the ice cubes.
The present disclosure is particularly related to the ice dispensing apparatus. A typical ice dispensing apparatus is designed to store the ice cubes made by the ice making apparatus and dispense the ice cubes by simply conveying the ice cubes when a user request the ice cubes. When the user requests the crushed ice pieces, the dispensing apparatus crushes the ice cubes and dispenses the ice pieces to the user.
However, since an amount of the ice cubes (or ice pieces) that is dispensed is not uniform, a large amount of the ice cubes is dispensed at a time. Further, when the ice cubes are conveyed by the conveying unit, an amount of the ice cubes conveyed by the conveying unit is not uniform. Therefore, when a large amount of the ice cubes are conveyed at a time, a bottleneck phenomenon occurs at a ice outlet side. This may cause a malfunction of the ice-crushing unit and a driving unit of the ice dispensing apparatus.
Further, since the ice cubes and the ice pieces are dispensed through a common dispensing path, the ice pieces remained in the ice-crushing unit may obstruct the dispensing of the ice cubes that are being dispensed by a next request.